


a bird in your chest with a song in its throat

by caesarous (wolstroh)



Series: early works [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolstroh/pseuds/caesarous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But then you look, you stare properly into his blown pupils like you're not afraid of the dark, and it hits you like a kick to the chest — you could never shatter him because he already shattered himself just for you, and you could never kill him because your own pupils are blown just as wide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a bird in your chest with a song in its throat

In the end, that's what you come home to every day: an empty mirror, a pint of blood, a terrifying smile on the glowing screen, and a blackbird on your shoulders.

You stand there, in front of the mirror that reflects absolutely nothing (that you can bear seeing), you stand there and you consider scaring the blackbird away. You consider wiping the smile off with your bare hands, driving knuckles into the glassy surface of the screen, hitting too close to home, and you raise your fists, you actually feel strong enough to break anything ( _Anyone_ , your traitorous, tainted, terrible blood whispers. _Anyone except him_ , it murmurs gently in your veins). But then you look, you stare properly into his blown pupils like you're not afraid of the dark, and it hits you like a kick to the chest — you could never shatter him because he already shattered himself just for you, and you could never kill him because your own pupils are blown just as wide.

You let your fingers unclench and your hands fall. You feel the blackbird's hollow murky eyes bore into your scalp; you feel your lips tingling with terror and longing where his blood is burning them like acid because it probably is. Most likely. He is more poisonous than any chemical ever known to man and you do not want to think about what it means that you don't even need an antidote anymore.

Your blood whispers the answers to you like it wants to make you feel better about yourself, like it wants to help and make it easier for you, lift the burden up a little bit so it's not pushing your broken ribs into your heart. The blood sings, chirps, flutters softly because it has wings with prettiest black feathers you've ever seen that kiss you lightly on the cheeks until you feel like swallowing smashed glass in spoonfuls. Your blood stinks of betrayal so big and awful it's not even funny in the first place.

He laughs at you anyway. He laughs, and it makes you shiver with everything you have, with every bone in your body, with every shred of dignity you can scrape and lock safely inside the deepest pit of your skull for no one to take away from you (no one but him). He laughs, and the pint of his blood coursing through your heart makes you want to yell so loud of justice— makes you want to pull in— slam your body into his so he's either not laughing anymore or you're laughing together, shaking with it, gasping for air and space that were no longer meant for you the second you laid your eyes on him.

"Darlin', with you there is simply no such thing as personal space, is there?" he smiles with savage, fervent, affectionate ruthlessness while your insides ache as you kiss him with your fists.

And that's it — that's the precise moment you realise you're done for. This moment when he reaches out to you, stained teeth grinning through the blood, and you knock him down, hard, making it not about punishment, but about _love_.

The word tears its way through your shredded throat (too much glass, too sharp) as an agonising howl.

He flinches and tries to inhale oxygen in portions.

You want to snort and say: "What's the matter? I thought you didn't need to breathe, you monster". But you can only scream like the wounded animal you are, you can only stare into his blackbird eyes that reflect love and agony and utter disgust, you can only spit out blood that isn't yours anymore — wasn't yours for a very long time — and hope that god annihilates you for being this arrogant.

God isn't compassionate enough, though, so he raises his hands to your face without falter, he places his burning palms on your cheeks, thumbs carelessly grazing your lips, and he just stays there, breathing heavily into the space between your mouths, wide lazy pupils staring into your own, deciphering all your embarrassing little secrets with just a fleeting glance, and you don't want to scream any longer because the blood is dripping steadily on your busted lips and you can't scream and swallow at the same time. (That's what your dead mother used to tell you: bedtime stories, Bruce; _fairytales_.)

You choose to swallow. Always. At this point it doesn't feel much like a choice, not really — you are an addict, his blood is inked in the tender flesh of your inner wrists where the veins stand out starkly, and there is simply no way of scrubbing it clean: you are beginning to think it goes deeper than skin and bone. You are beginning to think he has engraved himself on you like epitaphy on a gravestone.

"Shh, it's okay, Bruce. Breathe."

He leans in so that your foreheads are touching. It's nice in a completely fucked up way and you suppose you'll never know how you ended up clutching at him like you would blink out of existence any second if it weren't for him alone (you don't even want to wonder how true it is, you just don't). Clutching at him like he's yours to keep which is just stupid.

"C'mon, stop being dumb and breathe, Bats."

And you do. Lord have mercy on you, you _do_. You breathe for him. Inhale and exhale with every languid stroke of his calloused fingers on your face and neck until you feel kind of dizzy and light-headed at the same time.

While he holds you in place and makes you choke on oxygen you wonder if he's ever seen the blackbird, too. If it still sits there comfortably on your shoulders like it belongs there. You don't have to wonder where _you_ belong and it still makes you sick to the guts but you can't stop breathing because he will never let you, at least not alone.

You know with desperate clarity that it shouldn't be comforting at all.

It _is_.

"I've never felt more wrong in my entire life," you confess roughly as some foreign, ecstatic heat breaks you, splits you in half, wrecks irrepairably and without any mercy that was refused you since the day you were born.

He laughs, but it isn't taunting. His moutch is etching a smile onto your forehead, but you do not push him away. There are less stars in the sky than things that are wrong with you.

It's not like you didn't know that one already, frankly.

He chooses to pull back at the exact same moment when you move forward. Your noses collide but thank fuck your lips are nowhere on his. Thank fuck. If they really, really were, you would have killed him right there, honest to god. And then you would've done something stupid and drastic and not at all pretty like bashing in your own head.

"Ow," he groans, breathy. 'Watch where you're going, m'dear!' a slightly discontented smile is playing on his lips; you bite yours because you are afraid.

"Shut up," you rasp what feels like one eternity later.

Then you grab his shoulders, pull him in and hold on tight.

He murmurs-sighs something about 'dumb impulsive bats' and leans heavily on you, all heat and sharp angles that cut deeper than they have any right to.

His heart is beating against your own in perfect sync but it doesn't scare you anymore.

He tells you that he loves you, that he'll never leave you; it doesn't scare you either.

You bury your face in the crook of his neck and breathe.


End file.
